I have an existing website running. I want this site to be able to be viewed on mobiles smart phones as well. I am ready to shave off some stuff, but would like to know how can I test this and are there any tools/guidelines on how to repurpose the site to be best viewed on mobile phones ? How to detect on the web site whether a mobile phone or a PC is hitting the site and accordingly serve the appropriate content.
A:
There are few factors to consider such as: - screen size - touch vs non-touch
To detect whether the mobile phone hitting your site, you can simply verify the user agent.
Hery
2010-03-16 10:05:27
A:
There is a good article on this at A List Apart which will answer your implementation questions: Put Your Content in My Pocket
You can test by setting the user agent of your browser to that of mobile device. This can be done in safari under the develop settings, or firefox has various plugins.
And a tip, don't use anything that requires hover functionality. Touch screens don't hover.
Ross
2010-03-16 10:18:00
A:
You will find out it's a strange new world at http://mtld.mobi/
First decision you should make is which mobile platforms you want to support, then start coding...
Nir Levy
2010-03-16 10:28:21
A:
As some one mentioned http://mtld.mobi/ is the best place to start for resources but for testing I would use http://ready.mobi that will test and debug your site and provide interface to viewing your website in mobile platforms.
First you need to decide what platforms/browsers you are going to support. If it is only smart phones like Android/Iphone/Blackberry it would be a pretty safe bet that as long as the website works in crome and isn't VERY javascript intensive and the site is catered for smaller screens it would be fine.
That is the theory in practise mobile is mobile and real world testing is the only way to go for 100% coverage.
drubin
2010-03-16 11:38:42